Bruce Dyer went out lobstering as he does most days. He left the wharf at Erica’s Seafood on Basin Point and steamed out to the middle of Casco Bay. He was hauling traps east of Cape Elizabeth and Portland when a squall came through. It was sunny and calm, then all of a sudden, within fifteen minutes, there were four foot seas and thirty mile per hour winds.
Bruce was hauling in his string of fifteen traps all connected to one line, when he pulled up another guy’s traps that were tangled with his. About ten traps from the other fisherman’s string were overlain on Bruce’s traps. As Bruce tried to haul his own, the conditions worsened dramatically, and he was forced to cut the line of the other guy’s traps.
Having cut and dropped the other guy’s traps, Bruce felt it was necessary to let him know that he had no malicious intent. He would not have cut and dropped the traps if he hadn’t been forced to by the conditions. If that happens, it is best to nip it in the bud, so the fisherman who lost traps knows what happened. Bruce wrote a note on a piece of paper and tied it to the top of one of the guy’s buoys. The note was very sincere and apologetic.
Three weeks later, my alarm pulls me awake at three in the morning. I pull on jeans, a t-shirt, and a fleece and drive down to Basin Point. The world is covered with dew, and my high beam lights cut through wisps of cobweb-like fog.
When I finally make it all the way down Harpswell Neck, there are just a few lights on at the wharf. I pull in at the same time as a white Chevy Silverado. The truck backs up to the wharf and the fishermen get out.
They take their lunches out of the truck, hop in a skiff, and board the first boat off the wharf moored at a big orange ball buoy. A cabin light turns on, and the engine starts a low rumble. I mentally slap myself awake and step out of the car to start a long day of lobstering. I walk out on the wharf, down a ramp, and onto the floating dock.
The stars are bright, but there is already a first hint of light on the horizon over Bailey Island. One flood light shines bright from a shack on the end of the wharf, illuminating the reflection of wavy water on moored boat hulls. A fish jumps out of the water, apparently a striper that swims around the wharf.
Waiting on the dock is Mike, a man wearing a Harley-Davidson baseball cap with a big gray beard tinted brown on his moustache. We wait for the boat to meet us at the dock and head out into Casco Bay. On the dock, we are joined by Grandy, the dog of the owners of Erica’s Seafood and the wharf. Mike says that normally she isn’t out this early, but they must have been up late partying and forgot to bring her back in.
“We’re the early birds because we don’t fish inside,” Mike says, “We have to steam out right now because they all think lobsters are in, but they ain’t.”
Looking to the north, we can see the Interstate Lobster Co-op wharf at Pott’s Harbor where one other boat is starting up this early to head out deep into Casco Bay.
Mike says that late in the fall and into the winter, they leave at one or two in the morning so they can get far out into the bay and be fishing by first light. Sometimes they’ll sleep on the boat when it doesn’t make sense to come back home at eleven at night just to go out three hours later.
Finally, the boat leaves its mooring and Bruce Dyer pulls up alongside the dock.
The boat is a thirty-eight foot, white fiberglass lobster boat with a gray floor at the stern. The rails and fore deck are a pale blue. At the stern, large black numbers read “1054713”, and at the bow, “Captain Morgan” is written in fancy blue letters. The boat is named so because Bruce is the captain, and it is named after his daughter Morgan. The image of the Captain Morgan spiced rum character also stands fiercely next to the boat’s name. When Bruce isn’t working, Captain Morgan becomes a party boat for cookouts and hanging out on the water. You know it’s party time when he flies a Captain Morgan flag. When the flag isn’t flying, it’s time to catch lobster.
He greets me with a cheerful, “Good morning! And awayyyyyy we go!”
Bruce, 53, has very little hair except for his moustache. He has very short and balding white hair on his head and white stubble on his chin. But most noticeable, is his horseshoe shaped white moustache. From the corners of his mouth, the two sides extend down his chin in two vertical lines. He wears a sweatshirt and jeans and leaves the dock heading south.
Bruce gives me the captain’s chair for the day which is in the open cabin on top of the engine box. He stands to my right at the wheel, and Mike stands to my left leaning against the front counter.
They also have a sixteen year old kid named Timmy who helps work as a sternman. He has a peeling sunburn on the back of his neck and short brown hair that’s a little longer in front to fall onto his forehead. He has only been with Bruce and Mike for two weeks, but he’s on time, works hard, and is learning quickly. That’s more than they can say about their past couple helpers. Last summer, Timmy worked at the wharf weighing the lobsters that Bruce and a couple other guys brought in. Timmy wears only a t-shirt and jeans in the cold morning hours and sits with one leg over the side of the boat as we steam out into the Bay.
Normally, there’s one more crew member, Sadie. She is Bruce’s dog and good at hauling traps too. The spot where she sits is right next to the hydraulic trap hauler. Unfortunately, because I was coming along today, there wouldn’t be space for her as well. Bruce used to have a dog named Pepsi. He says that if he named the dog Coke, people would have thought he had a problem.
Bruce says, “I had to put her back in bed and have a talk. She wanted to come.”
The boat has three radios always streaming. One, providing a constant background, is tuned to 102.9 FM, Maine’s Classic Rock Station. The other two are marine radios tuned to channel 16, the emergency channel, and channel 74, the local South Harpswell gossip channel.
As we head out, a fisherman contacts us on channel 74. He’s coming up behind us and warns that he will leave a wake behind him. He has to steam out quickly because of the weight he has on the back of the boat, if he goes too slowly, water will flood into his boat from the open stern.
Bruce asks, “How’s your father doing?”
To which the fisherman replies, “Getting better slowly.”
Bruce says, “Have a good day,” and we continue as the wake passes under us.
Bruce explains that the other guy’s father just had a hip replacement.
“I guess we’re only human.”
We pass Horse Island, and Bruce explains why he is sympathetic to the other fisherman’s father’s situation. Just a year before, he had been holed up with a leg infection. He got it when his leg was sliced open by a rusty nail on the wharf. He had had a tetanus shot, but got a different leg infection. Bruce ignored it for awhile by wrapping it up and keeping pressure by the compression of his muck boots.
Finally, Bruce’s doctor said something along the lines of, “Put your boat up on shore or I’m gonna cut your leg off. It’s clear that you have a lobster addiction.”
So Bruce was forced to stay home with his leg elevated so a blood clot wouldn’t travel up to his heart.
We continue to steam out past the islands south of Harpswell Neck as pink in the sky rises behind us. Bruce drinks coffee from a disposable Circle K convenience store cup and refills from a Thermos. Mike smokes a Traffic cigarette and scrolls through Facebook. Timmy smokes a Marlboro Red and sits on the edge of the boat. A couple more boats are now heading out, and Bruce says, “The channel of Harpswell Neck is like I-95. You gotta merge.”
He switches the radio to channel 01, the NOAA weather channel, and we hear that there is a storm coming in the next couple days. We’re lucky. Today should be a good day for fishing.
We continue past Eagle Island which was once where the Arctic explorer Robert Peary lived. Bruce says that Peary used to row out and keep his dog sled team on Flag Island nearby. He would let them run around the island. When he needed to communicate with them, he would row over and yell through a megaphone.
Bruce says, “There are hundreds of islands in Casco Bay. It’s a whole bay of islands. It’s like battleship.”
Next we pass Bruce’s favorite, Jewel Island. It has a hidden cove where people love to moor their boats. There are often about thirty boats, half of which Bruce says are “highlanders” who complain about taking each other’s moorings. Bruce just thinks the disputes are entertaining. The island has a caretaker and two old submarine watch towers from World War II. People go up the towers at sunrise, sunset, and to propose marriage.
Bruce wiggles his fingers and says, “Just sprinkle me out the window.”
We continue out to where we can see Portland’s lights, then Cape Elizabeth and Two Lights. Off of Cape Elizabeth is Bruce’s favorite spot to fish. Just past that is Old Orchard Beach.
“It gets small real fast,” Bruce says, referring to Casco Bay compared to how big it seems when looking out from land.
We swerve around a seaweed bog, a collection of detached seaweed, as it floats in the rolling pink waters. There are more seaweed bogs than usual right now because it’s a full moon tide, so a lot of seaweed separates from its rock to spread elsewhere. Bruce avoids them because the seaweed can easily clog water intakes on the boat.
Mike and Timmy throw their cigarette butts over the side and pull on their orange Grundens. Grundens are bibbed, rubberized pants that nearly all fishermen wear.
Bruce says that when they get near lobsters, he feels like how Bugs Bunny tightens up over gold.
He puts his arms straight by his side, tenses his muscles, and puts on a giddy grin like Bugs Bunny, “They’re down there, I can feel ‘em.”
Bruce has a total of 800 traps, though he generally hauls about a third, 270, every time he fishes. He has a license to fish in state waters which is designated by being more than three miles offshore from any point of land. Most lobstermen do not have a state license and only fish close to shore. Bruce uses a technique called prospecting where they lay traps in specific waters with combinations of depth, temperature, and time, to maximize catch. Generally he will haul each trap once a week, though when prospecting he will haul them after just a few days. This allows Bruce to get a sense of where the lobsters are and where he should fish next.
His traps are grouped into fifty-three strings of fifteen traps. Each string consists of about one-quarter mile of rope. On each end are two buoys, then the rope falls down to the sea floor. From there, there is a trap every seventy-five feet. Each trap is attached to the main rope with an individual shorter rope. Strings of fifteen are common in offshore lobstering because there is more space and it is much more efficient. Closer to shore, lobstermen will have strings of five or ten or even single traps per buoy. The waters can get especially crowded inland, and lobstermen are constantly playing the game of gear placement.
When deciding where to put traps, lobstermen first think about where the lobsters are. Second, they consider potential gear hang ups. Most people don’t want to bang up their traps or lose them by getting their gear tangled up with someone else’s.
“I wanna fish where I wanna fish. It’s a rat race in there,” says Bruce, referring to the crowded inshore waters.
Lobster traps are customized for each lobsterman and cost about $125 each. Bruce has a trap builder who will make him 100 of his traps at time. Bruce used to build his own traps, but now he says he’s too busy being a fisherman.
We steamed out into Casco Bay with two strings stacked on the back of the boat. Every day, Bruce brings in a couple strings to patch by fixing up the netting and other hardware. He then puts them back out the next day and maintains a rotation so that all his traps are in good condition.
Bruce watches his GPS screen and waits until we are right on top of a hole in the sea floor. He avoids dropping the traps on a rock ledge, but rather aims for the bottom of a deeper valley.
Bruce cuts the engine and tosses a buoy overboard. He then lets out rope that was coiled in a plastic barrel. There is a spot marked with one foot of red tape. The tape is so that if a whale gets caught up in the rope, people can identify what region the rope came from.
Mike and Timmy then toss each trap over in order. Bruce holds the rope, Mike holds each trap on the boat rail, and Timmy hands Mike the next trap from the stack. At one point, Bruce stops Timmy in his tracks. He spots a trap that Timmy failed to put bait in.
“They fish a lot better with bait.”
He then turns to me and says, “This changes my title from captain to quality control guy.”
A few traps later, Timmy accidentally gives Mike a trap in the wrong order. This causes the rope on deck to be yanked back and a few traps from the other string on deck are pulled overboard. All three scramble to grab a hold of the many ropes quickly sliding off the stern. They haul the accidentally dropped traps back on board and quickly put the first string’s end buoys in.
This is only Timmy’s second time setting strings, but the mishap is also partly Mike’s fault. He was the one to stack the traps last night so he knew the order and should have been handing them over. That kind of mistake can be a captain’s nightmare.
Bruce says, “No swearing.” I’m not sure if that’s because I’m on board or because he’s just trying to keep his cool.
It is now 5:15 AM, and the pale purple light over Harpswell is quickly becoming light blue.
“This is as good as it gets,” Bruce says.
“The most important thing is don’t forget to write down the string.” Bruce records the exact location, date, number, and number of lobsters caught for each string in a white DuraRite notebook with waterproof paper. He records everything in neat all capital writing with a black pen. For every string, he puts a checkmark once it is hauled, and a star if it needs to be brought in to be patched.
After all the mayhem, he forgot to record the coordinates for the end of the first string. We continue to where we will drop the second string.
“I need to double up on the smokes after that one,” Bruce says.
Unlike most guys who toss their cigarette butts into the water, Bruce used to collect his butts in a coffee cup then throw them out on shore. Now, he smokes Natural American Spirit cigarettes with are solely tobacco, without the dozens of other chemicals in most brands. They also have a biodegradable butt, so Bruce doesn’t feel bad about tossing those over the side. He holds up a pack and says, “This is my divorce pack. I’ve been smoking twice as much as normal. That still doesn’t justify smoking though.”
Bruce is going through a fresh divorce. He recently moved out of the house where his twenty and twenty-one year old step-children were often partying and “cooking eight course meals” until two in the morning when he gets up to go fishing. All Bruce wanted was five minutes to make coffee and a little more respect.
The second string is much easier to drop because the stern of the boat is open, with no transom, so the traps can just slide into the water.
By 5:30 AM we are heading to where we will haul the first string of the day. Bruce goes slower to the first string so that Timmy has time to get the bait ready.
Bruce pulls a blue Gatorade bottle from his Playmate Igloo cooler called “The Boss”. He has another, smaller cooler that sits on the counter in front of him next to “The Boss”. This red Minimate serves the same purpose as a purse, holding Bruce’s phone, wallet, and keys. He takes a sip of Gatorade then lets the boat drive itself for a moment as he pulls on his Grundens.
“This is where I dress up as a lobster fisherman,” he says. Time to get down to business.
Bruce hits the switch to engage an electric clutch that transfers the engine’s energy from the propeller to the hydraulic power. Then he will disengage it before steaming to the next string. He picks up the buoy with a boat hook, which is a large and small plain white buoy with a red, yellow, or green colored paddle on the PVC pipe above. Bruce decided the colors one day when he was sitting at a stoplight and thought red, yellow, and green would work just fine for his buoys. Each paddle has the string number written in Sharpie. Twelve feet from the main buoy sits a second buoy that is an oval with a blue and yellow stripe. This double buoy system means that as Bruce pulls up the first buoy, there is a moment when the weight of the entire string is transferred to the second buoy so it is easier to put the rope onto the hydraulic hauler.
Bruce says, “With single buoys, if you’re a young guy, you can strong arm it up and put it in the hauler.” But he’ll take what he can get with a mechanical advantage.
This is string number 46 with a green paddle. As the hauler pulls up the rope, we all stand and wiggle our fingers, sending good vibes for the first trap of the day.
As each trap comes up, Bruce pauses the hauler and pulls the trap up onto the boat’s side rail. Mike slides it down and opens the door which is held shut with a bungee cord. Each trap has about ten lobsters in it. Mike picks up each one and flings almost all of them back into the water because they are not legal to catch. He measures the length from their head to the end of their carapace with a metal ruler-type tool. The difference between legal and not can be just an eighth of an inch either too big or too small. Mike also tosses back pregnant females and any with damaged tails. Mike places the good ones in a plastic bin behind him.
Bruce explains how a lobster trap works, “A trap is like a restaurant. Like a 99 Restaurant. A new guy comes in and he’s hungry. He doesn’t want to wait. So he eats. Then another new guy comes in and says, ‘Can I have your parking spot?’ At this point, the first guy is full and lazy, so he moseys out the back door because the front door is blocked by the hungry, aggressive ones.”
In a lobster trap, however, the back door doesn’t lead to the parking lot. Instead, it leads to the back section of the trap where lobsters are stuck until the trap is hauled.
Meanwhile, Timmy grabs a skewer with bait on it. Each skewer has an eyehole at the bottom of the metal rod. The bait in the trap is on a string. He detaches one end of the string, slides it through the eyehole, transfers the bait to the string, and re-ties the string to the trap. Timmy then closes the trap door and stacks the trap at the stern of the boat.
One trap comes up with ten lobsters crawling all over each other. Bruce looks at it and gets excited. He says there are two good ones. I can’t imagine how he can say that at first glance. Sure enough, after Mike goes through all of them, they could keep two.
The whole string ends up with twelve good lobsters. Bruce says they’re good lobsters, but just not enough. He will probably move that string to a different spot soon. If he gets twenty or more from a string, he knows that’s a good place to fish. That’s about one and a half pounds of lobster per trap. One pound per trap is enough to pay the guys who help Bruce and take care of equipment, but at two pounds per trap, he knows he’s making money.
After all the traps are checked, Bruce circles back around to where he wants to drop the string then sets the buoy and first trap in the water. Mike slides the next trap a little aft so it can fall smoothly into the water.
The hundreds of feet of rope coiled and lined up on the boat slide off the deck. Occasionally, Bruce steps on one section of the rope so that another section can all go out in order to avoid any tangles.
We continue through Casco Bay by West Cod Ledge, five miles off of the Cape Elizabeth light. All three men smoke cigarettes between hauling strings. Mike talks with a cigarette hanging from his lips which are made invisible by his beard. The sun now rises bright, hanging low in the sky. It throws an orange glow onto everything. In the distance, we can see two hot air balloons rising to the north. Behind then is a towering dark mountain.
Bruce says, “Who would think that from Casco Bay we can see Mount Washington?” It’s a spectacular sight.
Bruce turns to me and says, “Wanna see our mascot?”
From a gap in the side of the compass next to his coolers, he pulls out a small red Lego figurine of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants.
In Bruce’s best gruff, Mr. Krabs voice, he says, “It’s all about the money.”
Then Bruce, himself, adds, “Plus he can hold a joint in his hand. But he’s very serious and doesn’t smoke on the job.”
Between strings, Mike bands the lobsters they just caught. He has a metal tool that stretches a rubber band so he can slide it onto each lobster claw. Most get yellow bands, but the bigger ones with hard shells get black bands. The black banded lobsters are sold individually, while the others are sold by the pound.
Mike drops each banded lobster down a pipe on the banding table which drops the lobster into the holding tank. The holding tank has a wall in the middle of it with the word “MONEY” cut out in the middle. The lobsters fill the tank on both sides, travelling between sides through the “O” in “MONEY”. They say that if you can’t see the word money, you know you’re making money.
While Mike is banding, Timmy prepares the bait for the next string. He uses a pitchfork to bring fish from barrels at the stern to the steel bait table which sits atop the lobster holding tank. Timmy takes a skewer, slides on a mesh bait bag filled with smaller fish, then stabs four fish through the gills and slides them on as well. The bait is mostly pogies. Once Mike finishes banding, Timmy lines up the next fifteen bait skewers on the banding table so they can be easily reached when the next traps come up.
We are now close to the Portland shipping channel. Big ships will pass through going thirty knots, so Bruce says he is sure to always check twice when crossing. A boat crosses about a quarter mile in front of us. Bruce says that’s a guy out of Portland. He’s probably looking at the Captain Morgan and saying, “What do you know that I don’t?”
Bruce says he just puts on a poker face. He puts his hands on his hips, shrugs, and says to me, “Nothing. I know nothing.” He has the most expressive poker face I’ve ever seen.
We see another boat nearby, and Bruce recognizes it as the guy whose traps he had cut and dropped three weeks before. He goes up to the boat, a smaller boat named Deja Vu II, and the two captains talk to each other off the stern. They are yelling over the sounds of their engines as their boats drift apart. Bruce holds up his hands in surrender and says, “I’m very sorry.”
Bruce says that yes, Deja Vu II is a guy out of Portland, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to have his traps dropped. The fisherman hadn’t gotten Bruce’s note yet -- it was on the next buoy he was about to pick up. That means the fisherman hadn’t hauled that string in three weeks.
Bruce says, “It’s good to be nice. Maybe the next traps will have forty lobsters because God said, ‘You were nice. You deserve a bonus.’”
It’s 6:45 AM, and we haul string number 76.
Bruce says, “This is part of a herd I’m chasing.”
One trap comes up with quite a few lobsters.
Bruce says, “That’s a whammy! Now at this point, you can go, ‘Ch-Ching!’”
This string got thirty-one lobsters. That means two pounds per trap and more money for Bruce.
Bruce says this is why it’s worth it to live by the saying “Play nice on the playground”.
We see a minke whale and a harbor seal nearby as we go to haul string number 13. One of the traps in this string has a huge oversized female who is very pregnant. The guys say she’s not happy and just wants to get rid of her eggs. In the U.S., lobstermen can’t keep the big females because they have eggs and will produce more lobsters. Bruce and Mike, however, say that when they get this big, they actually kill more than they produce. They say it really isn’t healthy for the population.
They also catch a two and a half pound lobster which will go for $8 per pound, though Bruce will get a much lower boat price for it.
String 13 ended up with more lobsters on its north end. There were enough to warrant coming back, but next time, Bruce will drop it a little farther to the north.
We haul string 41 then string 40. By that time, it’s 7:30 AM, and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. Normally I would be waking up now, but today, we’ve already been working for three and a half hours.
The traps sometimes have a big crab caught in them or a piece of kelp dangling from the corner. As the tide slowly changes, Bruce has to be careful how he places the strings in the water so they don’t drift into someone else’s gear.
String 40 has new light blue rope. Bruce giddily says, “I love brand new rope. It’s like a brand new towel just out of the shower.”
Bruce says he just went to his thirty-fifth class reunion from Mt. Ararat High School. Scott Moody of Moody’s Seafood was in his class, but he wasn’t there -- likely due to starting several new facilities. At the reunion, Bruce got a lot of offers from women who were also recently divorced. Now, many of them are also liking pictures on Bruce’s Facebook page. Bruce says that he just wants to ride his motorcycle and catch lobster right now.
Bruce started fishing when he was twelve then got really into it from a high school class called Marine Occupations. For class, he would come out on the water with a teacher who taught navigation. The teacher was a product of the ‘70s. The teacher would turn the corner of Bailey Island and ask the students who had brought pot to share.
Bruce graduated in 1982, and his brother thought they would take over the family carpentry business. Bruce was not into it. Bruce can’t go up on the roof of a building, and he’ll get lost in the woods. Contrarily, his dad, brother and cousins get really seasick. His dad gets seasick on the skiff before even making it out to Bruce’s boat.
Bruce started fishing and lobstering full time out of high school. In the winters he works in a boat shop when there are a few days that are too cold or stormy to fish. This past spring he built a new center console for the Dolphin Marina’s launch.
We haul strings 42 and 3. The smell of bait fish is strong and persistent. When we’re stopped, there are diesel fumes, and when were are going, there are cigarette fumes.
“Everybody’s happy right now,” says Bruce. It’s the perfect temperature with plenty of oxygen so the algae, seaweed, and plankton are abundant. “That means life,” he says.
Someone hails the Captain Morgan on channel 16 on the marine radio. It’s Deja Vu II. Bruce suggests they move to channel 74 because you aren’t supposed to have conversations on 16, the emergency channel. The captain of Deja Vu II suggests channel 17. Channel 17 is a local channel which can only be heard within a two mile radius. And we are ten miles from Harpswell. That means that all the guys from Harpswell won’t be able to listen to their conversation and will miss out on the gossip.
On channel 17, the Deja Vu II captain says, “I’m sorry I steamed off. I realized I never apologized.” That is, apologize for letting his traps get tangled up with Bruce’s. Bruce thinks the captain probably got the note from the buoy, put it on his dash, and didn’t read it until three hours later. Bruce makes a comical, expressive face imagining the captain’s reaction. Then he mimics crying, saying how sincere his note was. Bruce couldn’t have possibly planned to be hauling the same string at the same time as Deja Vu II, and especially right before the guy picked up Bruce’s note.
String 3 was on hard rock testing out a 150 foot deep gravel channel. It ended up catching thirty lobsters, and it was only out for four nights as part of Bruce’s prospecting.
We haul string 54 at 9:00 AM. By the start of the normal work day, I’ve already been up for six hours. The lobsters in this string are a darker, almost greenish black because this string is 190 feet down in deeper water. Some of the lobsters from shallower strings are closer to a pale red.
As it warms up, Bruce and Mike take off their sweatshirts. Both wear dirty white t-shirts and arms full of tattoos. Bruce has a lobster and a Grateful Dead logo on each arm. He has “Morgan” written down one forearm and “Leigh” down the other -- his daughter’s name. One upper arm says “Harley” and the other says “Davidson”. Each elbow has a spider web. He has a Pepsi bottle, barbed wire, chain, cards, and more. He says his tattoos are a diary.
We haul string 9, then 28.
Bruce says, “I’m getting pretty excited because this is when I have Doritos!” He holds up his hands in the shape of guns and points toward the back of the boat where Mike and Timmy are. “No mutiny! I don’t wanna share!” He says, “Nacho cheese Doritos are the food of lobstering. They help catch lobster.”
That being said, he’s willing to share a little, as he offers me a Dorito. He also opens a bag of Hostess mini donut “donettes” and sets them on the dashboard for snacking.
For the next few strings, Bruce will use a technique called hopscotching. You move one string out, then the next one in a line like dominoes so that they all end up in deeper water. When string 28 is hauled in, we do not drop it back in there, but head to where several others are.
The dark blue fishing boat Ruth & Pat passes heading west into Portland. That’s the boat of Frankie Bichrest’s son who was probably fishing downeast near Mount Desert Island. The back of the boat is extremely low in the water from the weight of a full net of pogies.
Around 10:00 AM, six hours into their work day, Bruce pulls a handful of 5 Hour Energy’s from his cooler -- captain’s treat. He says, “Cheers to new friends!”
We are now near Halfway Rock, a small island with a lighthouse halfway between Portland to the west and Small Point on the eastern side of Casco Bay. We see a big jellyfish in the water, then another seal.
We pick up string 15 and hopscotch out to the next spot. We then pick up string 19 which was at a depth of 235 feet -- the deepest hold we’ve hauled today. Two herring gulls circle overhead, drawn to the bait aboard the boat.
Another large fishing boat crossed toward Portland. Bruce guesses that the whole fleet was down there, but this boat has a smaller engine so it got to Portland a couple hours after Ruth & Pat.
It’s 11:00 AM, and we’re under the hottest sun of the day. A couple clouds reflect in the roaming ripples of the water. On shore we can see many more clouds. Out to sea, there is nothing but a perfectly flat horizon.
Bruce says, “It’s gorgeous out. I love my job.”
West of East Cod Ledge, we haul strings 53 and 49 . Bruce pulls up a trap and before it even comes up over the side of the boat he turns to me and says with a grin, “I’m not even gonna say anything.”
He pulls it up onto the rail. Mike opens the door and picks up one big lobster in each hand.
“Double handed!” Bruce exclaims.
Lobsters shed twice a year and can change a quarter inch in length just from one shed. They can also release their claws if they’re in danger. In one year, the claw will already be half its original size. Sometimes they’ll even release both claws if they need to. In Florida, Bruce says, the lobsters are the same except they don’t have any claws. People will come up here and be so surprised that their claws will grab you.
Sometimes, just for fun, Bruce dresses up like a tourist. He wears shorts, a shirt with a lobster on it, and a white hat. In stores, friends walk right by him and ask Mike, “Where’s Bruce?”
We haul string 10 at noon. Bruce finishes the bag of Hostess donettes and triumphantly flips it upside down. A little of the extra powder sugar falls out onto the deck. We haul string 17. Bruce takes a selfie with me and posts it to his Facebook. “I only put wholesome, real life stuff on Facebook,” he says.
Between strings 52 and 8, Bruce talks about the regulations he has to abide by. He has to account for fuel, bait, help, and his federal permit. Every day, he has to fill out a report with details about his catch, traps, and helpers. The report has five copies: one for the government, one for his dealer, one for Bruce, and two back-ups. Bruce has a permit for 400 traps in Zone G in western Casco Bay and 400 in Zone F to the east.
Before they set string 8 back in the water, Bruce sees a bait bag hanging out of a trap. He tells Timmy and says, “Timmy must think, ‘How’s he see that shit?’”
Bruce gets animated, “I’m like a bus driver. Jimmy, sit down!” He now holds the titles of captain, quality control guy, and bus driver.
We haul strings 2, 14, and 18 between East Cod Ledge and the Spoil Ground.
South of us, the chart on the screen of the GPS says “Explosives”. Bruce says that about twenty-five years ago when the Navy still had a base in Brunswick, they would practice dropping bombs in the area. They would call out on the radio for no boats to enter the area during that time. Apparently, there are some bombs that have still not gone off.
Bruce says, “If it’s on the map, it’s not good.”
By 3:00 PM, we go out to haul two more strings, and the wind gets a little sharper. A herring gull stands on our bow, catching a ride. Bruce guesses that it was probably tired and hoping for a ride back to shore. Too bad we still have one more string to haul. By now I’ve gotten used to the strong smell of bait and hardly smell it. These guys must not notice it at all.
We get to our final string, number 1, at 3:50 PM. Bruce saved this string for last because he is bringing it in to be patched. He removes the buoys, and coils the rope into a plastic barrel. When each trap comes up, Bruce unties it from the rope, Mike checks the lobsters, and Timmy stacks in at the stern. The quarter mile of rope from one string fills an entire blue barrel.
By 4:15 PM we are cruising back north toward Harpswell. Bruce drinks coffee, puts on his reading glasses, scrolls through Facebook checking how many likes there are so far on his selfie with me. (It’s up to sixty by now.) Mike and Timmy smoke cigarettes before scrubbing down every surface of the boat. We steam back at 10.6 knots.
Bruce says, “The best part of the day is going home.”
The Ruth & Pat heads back out from Portland. It was only in Portland for three hours, long enough to pump the fish out and pump more fuel in.
After catching lobster from a total of twenty-four strings we get back to Harpswell. Bruce weaves through the “highlander’s” boats moored at the Dolphin Marina and pulls up to the wharf.
Bruce sells his lobsters to Tommy Butler, also known as Toby, at the Erica’s Seafood wharf. Tommy has two other boats that also fish for him. He sells to 300-400 people a day both fresh lobsters and cooked at the Erica’s shack.
Bruce says, “It’s really nice coming in and seeing all the people sitting at the picnic tables enjoying their lobster dinner at Erica’s and know that’s your lobster. It’s as fresh as it gets.”
It would be nice if Tommy could have ten crates of lobsters ready at the wharf, but the demand is so high that he often only has one crate on reserve. Sometimes they even use that day’s catch for lobster rolls in the evening.
They unload the lobsters from the boat and weigh them into ninety pound plastic crates. Tommy brings the black banded hard shell lobsters up from the wharf where there are people waiting to buy the fresh lobsters.
Fourteen hours after I got to the wharf in the dark and was greeted by Grandy, the parking lot and picnic tables are full. People are enjoying their six o’clock dinner.
Before I leave, Bruce says, “Today was good. I saw what I needed to see, got the information I needed, and know where I’m going to fish next.”
Bruce was hauling in his string of fifteen traps all connected to one line, when he pulled up another guy’s traps that were tangled with his. About ten traps from the other fisherman’s string were overlain on Bruce’s traps. As Bruce tried to haul his own, the conditions worsened dramatically, and he was forced to cut the line of the other guy’s traps.
Having cut and dropped the other guy’s traps, Bruce felt it was necessary to let him know that he had no malicious intent. He would not have cut and dropped the traps if he hadn’t been forced to by the conditions. If that happens, it is best to nip it in the bud, so the fisherman who lost traps knows what happened. Bruce wrote a note on a piece of paper and tied it to the top of one of the guy’s buoys. The note was very sincere and apologetic.
Three weeks later, my alarm pulls me awake at three in the morning. I pull on jeans, a t-shirt, and a fleece and drive down to Basin Point. The world is covered with dew, and my high beam lights cut through wisps of cobweb-like fog.
When I finally make it all the way down Harpswell Neck, there are just a few lights on at the wharf. I pull in at the same time as a white Chevy Silverado. The truck backs up to the wharf and the fishermen get out.
They take their lunches out of the truck, hop in a skiff, and board the first boat off the wharf moored at a big orange ball buoy. A cabin light turns on, and the engine starts a low rumble. I mentally slap myself awake and step out of the car to start a long day of lobstering. I walk out on the wharf, down a ramp, and onto the floating dock.
The stars are bright, but there is already a first hint of light on the horizon over Bailey Island. One flood light shines bright from a shack on the end of the wharf, illuminating the reflection of wavy water on moored boat hulls. A fish jumps out of the water, apparently a striper that swims around the wharf.
Waiting on the dock is Mike, a man wearing a Harley-Davidson baseball cap with a big gray beard tinted brown on his moustache. We wait for the boat to meet us at the dock and head out into Casco Bay. On the dock, we are joined by Grandy, the dog of the owners of Erica’s Seafood and the wharf. Mike says that normally she isn’t out this early, but they must have been up late partying and forgot to bring her back in.
“We’re the early birds because we don’t fish inside,” Mike says, “We have to steam out right now because they all think lobsters are in, but they ain’t.”
Looking to the north, we can see the Interstate Lobster Co-op wharf at Pott’s Harbor where one other boat is starting up this early to head out deep into Casco Bay.
Mike says that late in the fall and into the winter, they leave at one or two in the morning so they can get far out into the bay and be fishing by first light. Sometimes they’ll sleep on the boat when it doesn’t make sense to come back home at eleven at night just to go out three hours later.
Finally, the boat leaves its mooring and Bruce Dyer pulls up alongside the dock.
The boat is a thirty-eight foot, white fiberglass lobster boat with a gray floor at the stern. The rails and fore deck are a pale blue. At the stern, large black numbers read “1054713”, and at the bow, “Captain Morgan” is written in fancy blue letters. The boat is named so because Bruce is the captain, and it is named after his daughter Morgan. The image of the Captain Morgan spiced rum character also stands fiercely next to the boat’s name. When Bruce isn’t working, Captain Morgan becomes a party boat for cookouts and hanging out on the water. You know it’s party time when he flies a Captain Morgan flag. When the flag isn’t flying, it’s time to catch lobster.
He greets me with a cheerful, “Good morning! And awayyyyyy we go!”
Bruce, 53, has very little hair except for his moustache. He has very short and balding white hair on his head and white stubble on his chin. But most noticeable, is his horseshoe shaped white moustache. From the corners of his mouth, the two sides extend down his chin in two vertical lines. He wears a sweatshirt and jeans and leaves the dock heading south.
Bruce gives me the captain’s chair for the day which is in the open cabin on top of the engine box. He stands to my right at the wheel, and Mike stands to my left leaning against the front counter.
They also have a sixteen year old kid named Timmy who helps work as a sternman. He has a peeling sunburn on the back of his neck and short brown hair that’s a little longer in front to fall onto his forehead. He has only been with Bruce and Mike for two weeks, but he’s on time, works hard, and is learning quickly. That’s more than they can say about their past couple helpers. Last summer, Timmy worked at the wharf weighing the lobsters that Bruce and a couple other guys brought in. Timmy wears only a t-shirt and jeans in the cold morning hours and sits with one leg over the side of the boat as we steam out into the Bay.
Normally, there’s one more crew member, Sadie. She is Bruce’s dog and good at hauling traps too. The spot where she sits is right next to the hydraulic trap hauler. Unfortunately, because I was coming along today, there wouldn’t be space for her as well. Bruce used to have a dog named Pepsi. He says that if he named the dog Coke, people would have thought he had a problem.
Bruce says, “I had to put her back in bed and have a talk. She wanted to come.”
The boat has three radios always streaming. One, providing a constant background, is tuned to 102.9 FM, Maine’s Classic Rock Station. The other two are marine radios tuned to channel 16, the emergency channel, and channel 74, the local South Harpswell gossip channel.
As we head out, a fisherman contacts us on channel 74. He’s coming up behind us and warns that he will leave a wake behind him. He has to steam out quickly because of the weight he has on the back of the boat, if he goes too slowly, water will flood into his boat from the open stern.
Bruce asks, “How’s your father doing?”
To which the fisherman replies, “Getting better slowly.”
Bruce says, “Have a good day,” and we continue as the wake passes under us.
Bruce explains that the other guy’s father just had a hip replacement.
“I guess we’re only human.”
We pass Horse Island, and Bruce explains why he is sympathetic to the other fisherman’s father’s situation. Just a year before, he had been holed up with a leg infection. He got it when his leg was sliced open by a rusty nail on the wharf. He had had a tetanus shot, but got a different leg infection. Bruce ignored it for awhile by wrapping it up and keeping pressure by the compression of his muck boots.
Finally, Bruce’s doctor said something along the lines of, “Put your boat up on shore or I’m gonna cut your leg off. It’s clear that you have a lobster addiction.”
So Bruce was forced to stay home with his leg elevated so a blood clot wouldn’t travel up to his heart.
We continue to steam out past the islands south of Harpswell Neck as pink in the sky rises behind us. Bruce drinks coffee from a disposable Circle K convenience store cup and refills from a Thermos. Mike smokes a Traffic cigarette and scrolls through Facebook. Timmy smokes a Marlboro Red and sits on the edge of the boat. A couple more boats are now heading out, and Bruce says, “The channel of Harpswell Neck is like I-95. You gotta merge.”
He switches the radio to channel 01, the NOAA weather channel, and we hear that there is a storm coming in the next couple days. We’re lucky. Today should be a good day for fishing.
We continue past Eagle Island which was once where the Arctic explorer Robert Peary lived. Bruce says that Peary used to row out and keep his dog sled team on Flag Island nearby. He would let them run around the island. When he needed to communicate with them, he would row over and yell through a megaphone.
Bruce says, “There are hundreds of islands in Casco Bay. It’s a whole bay of islands. It’s like battleship.”
Next we pass Bruce’s favorite, Jewel Island. It has a hidden cove where people love to moor their boats. There are often about thirty boats, half of which Bruce says are “highlanders” who complain about taking each other’s moorings. Bruce just thinks the disputes are entertaining. The island has a caretaker and two old submarine watch towers from World War II. People go up the towers at sunrise, sunset, and to propose marriage.
Bruce wiggles his fingers and says, “Just sprinkle me out the window.”
We continue out to where we can see Portland’s lights, then Cape Elizabeth and Two Lights. Off of Cape Elizabeth is Bruce’s favorite spot to fish. Just past that is Old Orchard Beach.
“It gets small real fast,” Bruce says, referring to Casco Bay compared to how big it seems when looking out from land.
We swerve around a seaweed bog, a collection of detached seaweed, as it floats in the rolling pink waters. There are more seaweed bogs than usual right now because it’s a full moon tide, so a lot of seaweed separates from its rock to spread elsewhere. Bruce avoids them because the seaweed can easily clog water intakes on the boat.
Mike and Timmy throw their cigarette butts over the side and pull on their orange Grundens. Grundens are bibbed, rubberized pants that nearly all fishermen wear.
Bruce says that when they get near lobsters, he feels like how Bugs Bunny tightens up over gold.
He puts his arms straight by his side, tenses his muscles, and puts on a giddy grin like Bugs Bunny, “They’re down there, I can feel ‘em.”
Bruce has a total of 800 traps, though he generally hauls about a third, 270, every time he fishes. He has a license to fish in state waters which is designated by being more than three miles offshore from any point of land. Most lobstermen do not have a state license and only fish close to shore. Bruce uses a technique called prospecting where they lay traps in specific waters with combinations of depth, temperature, and time, to maximize catch. Generally he will haul each trap once a week, though when prospecting he will haul them after just a few days. This allows Bruce to get a sense of where the lobsters are and where he should fish next.
His traps are grouped into fifty-three strings of fifteen traps. Each string consists of about one-quarter mile of rope. On each end are two buoys, then the rope falls down to the sea floor. From there, there is a trap every seventy-five feet. Each trap is attached to the main rope with an individual shorter rope. Strings of fifteen are common in offshore lobstering because there is more space and it is much more efficient. Closer to shore, lobstermen will have strings of five or ten or even single traps per buoy. The waters can get especially crowded inland, and lobstermen are constantly playing the game of gear placement.
When deciding where to put traps, lobstermen first think about where the lobsters are. Second, they consider potential gear hang ups. Most people don’t want to bang up their traps or lose them by getting their gear tangled up with someone else’s.
“I wanna fish where I wanna fish. It’s a rat race in there,” says Bruce, referring to the crowded inshore waters.
Lobster traps are customized for each lobsterman and cost about $125 each. Bruce has a trap builder who will make him 100 of his traps at time. Bruce used to build his own traps, but now he says he’s too busy being a fisherman.
We steamed out into Casco Bay with two strings stacked on the back of the boat. Every day, Bruce brings in a couple strings to patch by fixing up the netting and other hardware. He then puts them back out the next day and maintains a rotation so that all his traps are in good condition.
Bruce watches his GPS screen and waits until we are right on top of a hole in the sea floor. He avoids dropping the traps on a rock ledge, but rather aims for the bottom of a deeper valley.
Bruce cuts the engine and tosses a buoy overboard. He then lets out rope that was coiled in a plastic barrel. There is a spot marked with one foot of red tape. The tape is so that if a whale gets caught up in the rope, people can identify what region the rope came from.
Mike and Timmy then toss each trap over in order. Bruce holds the rope, Mike holds each trap on the boat rail, and Timmy hands Mike the next trap from the stack. At one point, Bruce stops Timmy in his tracks. He spots a trap that Timmy failed to put bait in.
“They fish a lot better with bait.”
He then turns to me and says, “This changes my title from captain to quality control guy.”
A few traps later, Timmy accidentally gives Mike a trap in the wrong order. This causes the rope on deck to be yanked back and a few traps from the other string on deck are pulled overboard. All three scramble to grab a hold of the many ropes quickly sliding off the stern. They haul the accidentally dropped traps back on board and quickly put the first string’s end buoys in.
This is only Timmy’s second time setting strings, but the mishap is also partly Mike’s fault. He was the one to stack the traps last night so he knew the order and should have been handing them over. That kind of mistake can be a captain’s nightmare.
Bruce says, “No swearing.” I’m not sure if that’s because I’m on board or because he’s just trying to keep his cool.
It is now 5:15 AM, and the pale purple light over Harpswell is quickly becoming light blue.
“This is as good as it gets,” Bruce says.
“The most important thing is don’t forget to write down the string.” Bruce records the exact location, date, number, and number of lobsters caught for each string in a white DuraRite notebook with waterproof paper. He records everything in neat all capital writing with a black pen. For every string, he puts a checkmark once it is hauled, and a star if it needs to be brought in to be patched.
After all the mayhem, he forgot to record the coordinates for the end of the first string. We continue to where we will drop the second string.
“I need to double up on the smokes after that one,” Bruce says.
Unlike most guys who toss their cigarette butts into the water, Bruce used to collect his butts in a coffee cup then throw them out on shore. Now, he smokes Natural American Spirit cigarettes with are solely tobacco, without the dozens of other chemicals in most brands. They also have a biodegradable butt, so Bruce doesn’t feel bad about tossing those over the side. He holds up a pack and says, “This is my divorce pack. I’ve been smoking twice as much as normal. That still doesn’t justify smoking though.”
Bruce is going through a fresh divorce. He recently moved out of the house where his twenty and twenty-one year old step-children were often partying and “cooking eight course meals” until two in the morning when he gets up to go fishing. All Bruce wanted was five minutes to make coffee and a little more respect.
The second string is much easier to drop because the stern of the boat is open, with no transom, so the traps can just slide into the water.
By 5:30 AM we are heading to where we will haul the first string of the day. Bruce goes slower to the first string so that Timmy has time to get the bait ready.
Bruce pulls a blue Gatorade bottle from his Playmate Igloo cooler called “The Boss”. He has another, smaller cooler that sits on the counter in front of him next to “The Boss”. This red Minimate serves the same purpose as a purse, holding Bruce’s phone, wallet, and keys. He takes a sip of Gatorade then lets the boat drive itself for a moment as he pulls on his Grundens.
“This is where I dress up as a lobster fisherman,” he says. Time to get down to business.
Bruce hits the switch to engage an electric clutch that transfers the engine’s energy from the propeller to the hydraulic power. Then he will disengage it before steaming to the next string. He picks up the buoy with a boat hook, which is a large and small plain white buoy with a red, yellow, or green colored paddle on the PVC pipe above. Bruce decided the colors one day when he was sitting at a stoplight and thought red, yellow, and green would work just fine for his buoys. Each paddle has the string number written in Sharpie. Twelve feet from the main buoy sits a second buoy that is an oval with a blue and yellow stripe. This double buoy system means that as Bruce pulls up the first buoy, there is a moment when the weight of the entire string is transferred to the second buoy so it is easier to put the rope onto the hydraulic hauler.
Bruce says, “With single buoys, if you’re a young guy, you can strong arm it up and put it in the hauler.” But he’ll take what he can get with a mechanical advantage.
This is string number 46 with a green paddle. As the hauler pulls up the rope, we all stand and wiggle our fingers, sending good vibes for the first trap of the day.
As each trap comes up, Bruce pauses the hauler and pulls the trap up onto the boat’s side rail. Mike slides it down and opens the door which is held shut with a bungee cord. Each trap has about ten lobsters in it. Mike picks up each one and flings almost all of them back into the water because they are not legal to catch. He measures the length from their head to the end of their carapace with a metal ruler-type tool. The difference between legal and not can be just an eighth of an inch either too big or too small. Mike also tosses back pregnant females and any with damaged tails. Mike places the good ones in a plastic bin behind him.
Bruce explains how a lobster trap works, “A trap is like a restaurant. Like a 99 Restaurant. A new guy comes in and he’s hungry. He doesn’t want to wait. So he eats. Then another new guy comes in and says, ‘Can I have your parking spot?’ At this point, the first guy is full and lazy, so he moseys out the back door because the front door is blocked by the hungry, aggressive ones.”
In a lobster trap, however, the back door doesn’t lead to the parking lot. Instead, it leads to the back section of the trap where lobsters are stuck until the trap is hauled.
Meanwhile, Timmy grabs a skewer with bait on it. Each skewer has an eyehole at the bottom of the metal rod. The bait in the trap is on a string. He detaches one end of the string, slides it through the eyehole, transfers the bait to the string, and re-ties the string to the trap. Timmy then closes the trap door and stacks the trap at the stern of the boat.
One trap comes up with ten lobsters crawling all over each other. Bruce looks at it and gets excited. He says there are two good ones. I can’t imagine how he can say that at first glance. Sure enough, after Mike goes through all of them, they could keep two.
The whole string ends up with twelve good lobsters. Bruce says they’re good lobsters, but just not enough. He will probably move that string to a different spot soon. If he gets twenty or more from a string, he knows that’s a good place to fish. That’s about one and a half pounds of lobster per trap. One pound per trap is enough to pay the guys who help Bruce and take care of equipment, but at two pounds per trap, he knows he’s making money.
After all the traps are checked, Bruce circles back around to where he wants to drop the string then sets the buoy and first trap in the water. Mike slides the next trap a little aft so it can fall smoothly into the water.
The hundreds of feet of rope coiled and lined up on the boat slide off the deck. Occasionally, Bruce steps on one section of the rope so that another section can all go out in order to avoid any tangles.
We continue through Casco Bay by West Cod Ledge, five miles off of the Cape Elizabeth light. All three men smoke cigarettes between hauling strings. Mike talks with a cigarette hanging from his lips which are made invisible by his beard. The sun now rises bright, hanging low in the sky. It throws an orange glow onto everything. In the distance, we can see two hot air balloons rising to the north. Behind then is a towering dark mountain.
Bruce says, “Who would think that from Casco Bay we can see Mount Washington?” It’s a spectacular sight.
Bruce turns to me and says, “Wanna see our mascot?”
From a gap in the side of the compass next to his coolers, he pulls out a small red Lego figurine of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants.
In Bruce’s best gruff, Mr. Krabs voice, he says, “It’s all about the money.”
Then Bruce, himself, adds, “Plus he can hold a joint in his hand. But he’s very serious and doesn’t smoke on the job.”
Between strings, Mike bands the lobsters they just caught. He has a metal tool that stretches a rubber band so he can slide it onto each lobster claw. Most get yellow bands, but the bigger ones with hard shells get black bands. The black banded lobsters are sold individually, while the others are sold by the pound.
Mike drops each banded lobster down a pipe on the banding table which drops the lobster into the holding tank. The holding tank has a wall in the middle of it with the word “MONEY” cut out in the middle. The lobsters fill the tank on both sides, travelling between sides through the “O” in “MONEY”. They say that if you can’t see the word money, you know you’re making money.
While Mike is banding, Timmy prepares the bait for the next string. He uses a pitchfork to bring fish from barrels at the stern to the steel bait table which sits atop the lobster holding tank. Timmy takes a skewer, slides on a mesh bait bag filled with smaller fish, then stabs four fish through the gills and slides them on as well. The bait is mostly pogies. Once Mike finishes banding, Timmy lines up the next fifteen bait skewers on the banding table so they can be easily reached when the next traps come up.
We are now close to the Portland shipping channel. Big ships will pass through going thirty knots, so Bruce says he is sure to always check twice when crossing. A boat crosses about a quarter mile in front of us. Bruce says that’s a guy out of Portland. He’s probably looking at the Captain Morgan and saying, “What do you know that I don’t?”
Bruce says he just puts on a poker face. He puts his hands on his hips, shrugs, and says to me, “Nothing. I know nothing.” He has the most expressive poker face I’ve ever seen.
We see another boat nearby, and Bruce recognizes it as the guy whose traps he had cut and dropped three weeks before. He goes up to the boat, a smaller boat named Deja Vu II, and the two captains talk to each other off the stern. They are yelling over the sounds of their engines as their boats drift apart. Bruce holds up his hands in surrender and says, “I’m very sorry.”
Bruce says that yes, Deja Vu II is a guy out of Portland, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to have his traps dropped. The fisherman hadn’t gotten Bruce’s note yet -- it was on the next buoy he was about to pick up. That means the fisherman hadn’t hauled that string in three weeks.
Bruce says, “It’s good to be nice. Maybe the next traps will have forty lobsters because God said, ‘You were nice. You deserve a bonus.’”
It’s 6:45 AM, and we haul string number 76.
Bruce says, “This is part of a herd I’m chasing.”
One trap comes up with quite a few lobsters.
Bruce says, “That’s a whammy! Now at this point, you can go, ‘Ch-Ching!’”
This string got thirty-one lobsters. That means two pounds per trap and more money for Bruce.
Bruce says this is why it’s worth it to live by the saying “Play nice on the playground”.
We see a minke whale and a harbor seal nearby as we go to haul string number 13. One of the traps in this string has a huge oversized female who is very pregnant. The guys say she’s not happy and just wants to get rid of her eggs. In the U.S., lobstermen can’t keep the big females because they have eggs and will produce more lobsters. Bruce and Mike, however, say that when they get this big, they actually kill more than they produce. They say it really isn’t healthy for the population.
They also catch a two and a half pound lobster which will go for $8 per pound, though Bruce will get a much lower boat price for it.
String 13 ended up with more lobsters on its north end. There were enough to warrant coming back, but next time, Bruce will drop it a little farther to the north.
We haul string 41 then string 40. By that time, it’s 7:30 AM, and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. Normally I would be waking up now, but today, we’ve already been working for three and a half hours.
The traps sometimes have a big crab caught in them or a piece of kelp dangling from the corner. As the tide slowly changes, Bruce has to be careful how he places the strings in the water so they don’t drift into someone else’s gear.
String 40 has new light blue rope. Bruce giddily says, “I love brand new rope. It’s like a brand new towel just out of the shower.”
Bruce says he just went to his thirty-fifth class reunion from Mt. Ararat High School. Scott Moody of Moody’s Seafood was in his class, but he wasn’t there -- likely due to starting several new facilities. At the reunion, Bruce got a lot of offers from women who were also recently divorced. Now, many of them are also liking pictures on Bruce’s Facebook page. Bruce says that he just wants to ride his motorcycle and catch lobster right now.
Bruce started fishing when he was twelve then got really into it from a high school class called Marine Occupations. For class, he would come out on the water with a teacher who taught navigation. The teacher was a product of the ‘70s. The teacher would turn the corner of Bailey Island and ask the students who had brought pot to share.
Bruce graduated in 1982, and his brother thought they would take over the family carpentry business. Bruce was not into it. Bruce can’t go up on the roof of a building, and he’ll get lost in the woods. Contrarily, his dad, brother and cousins get really seasick. His dad gets seasick on the skiff before even making it out to Bruce’s boat.
Bruce started fishing and lobstering full time out of high school. In the winters he works in a boat shop when there are a few days that are too cold or stormy to fish. This past spring he built a new center console for the Dolphin Marina’s launch.
We haul strings 42 and 3. The smell of bait fish is strong and persistent. When we’re stopped, there are diesel fumes, and when were are going, there are cigarette fumes.
“Everybody’s happy right now,” says Bruce. It’s the perfect temperature with plenty of oxygen so the algae, seaweed, and plankton are abundant. “That means life,” he says.
Someone hails the Captain Morgan on channel 16 on the marine radio. It’s Deja Vu II. Bruce suggests they move to channel 74 because you aren’t supposed to have conversations on 16, the emergency channel. The captain of Deja Vu II suggests channel 17. Channel 17 is a local channel which can only be heard within a two mile radius. And we are ten miles from Harpswell. That means that all the guys from Harpswell won’t be able to listen to their conversation and will miss out on the gossip.
On channel 17, the Deja Vu II captain says, “I’m sorry I steamed off. I realized I never apologized.” That is, apologize for letting his traps get tangled up with Bruce’s. Bruce thinks the captain probably got the note from the buoy, put it on his dash, and didn’t read it until three hours later. Bruce makes a comical, expressive face imagining the captain’s reaction. Then he mimics crying, saying how sincere his note was. Bruce couldn’t have possibly planned to be hauling the same string at the same time as Deja Vu II, and especially right before the guy picked up Bruce’s note.
String 3 was on hard rock testing out a 150 foot deep gravel channel. It ended up catching thirty lobsters, and it was only out for four nights as part of Bruce’s prospecting.
We haul string 54 at 9:00 AM. By the start of the normal work day, I’ve already been up for six hours. The lobsters in this string are a darker, almost greenish black because this string is 190 feet down in deeper water. Some of the lobsters from shallower strings are closer to a pale red.
As it warms up, Bruce and Mike take off their sweatshirts. Both wear dirty white t-shirts and arms full of tattoos. Bruce has a lobster and a Grateful Dead logo on each arm. He has “Morgan” written down one forearm and “Leigh” down the other -- his daughter’s name. One upper arm says “Harley” and the other says “Davidson”. Each elbow has a spider web. He has a Pepsi bottle, barbed wire, chain, cards, and more. He says his tattoos are a diary.
We haul string 9, then 28.
Bruce says, “I’m getting pretty excited because this is when I have Doritos!” He holds up his hands in the shape of guns and points toward the back of the boat where Mike and Timmy are. “No mutiny! I don’t wanna share!” He says, “Nacho cheese Doritos are the food of lobstering. They help catch lobster.”
That being said, he’s willing to share a little, as he offers me a Dorito. He also opens a bag of Hostess mini donut “donettes” and sets them on the dashboard for snacking.
For the next few strings, Bruce will use a technique called hopscotching. You move one string out, then the next one in a line like dominoes so that they all end up in deeper water. When string 28 is hauled in, we do not drop it back in there, but head to where several others are.
The dark blue fishing boat Ruth & Pat passes heading west into Portland. That’s the boat of Frankie Bichrest’s son who was probably fishing downeast near Mount Desert Island. The back of the boat is extremely low in the water from the weight of a full net of pogies.
Around 10:00 AM, six hours into their work day, Bruce pulls a handful of 5 Hour Energy’s from his cooler -- captain’s treat. He says, “Cheers to new friends!”
We are now near Halfway Rock, a small island with a lighthouse halfway between Portland to the west and Small Point on the eastern side of Casco Bay. We see a big jellyfish in the water, then another seal.
We pick up string 15 and hopscotch out to the next spot. We then pick up string 19 which was at a depth of 235 feet -- the deepest hold we’ve hauled today. Two herring gulls circle overhead, drawn to the bait aboard the boat.
Another large fishing boat crossed toward Portland. Bruce guesses that the whole fleet was down there, but this boat has a smaller engine so it got to Portland a couple hours after Ruth & Pat.
It’s 11:00 AM, and we’re under the hottest sun of the day. A couple clouds reflect in the roaming ripples of the water. On shore we can see many more clouds. Out to sea, there is nothing but a perfectly flat horizon.
Bruce says, “It’s gorgeous out. I love my job.”
West of East Cod Ledge, we haul strings 53 and 49 . Bruce pulls up a trap and before it even comes up over the side of the boat he turns to me and says with a grin, “I’m not even gonna say anything.”
He pulls it up onto the rail. Mike opens the door and picks up one big lobster in each hand.
“Double handed!” Bruce exclaims.
Lobsters shed twice a year and can change a quarter inch in length just from one shed. They can also release their claws if they’re in danger. In one year, the claw will already be half its original size. Sometimes they’ll even release both claws if they need to. In Florida, Bruce says, the lobsters are the same except they don’t have any claws. People will come up here and be so surprised that their claws will grab you.
Sometimes, just for fun, Bruce dresses up like a tourist. He wears shorts, a shirt with a lobster on it, and a white hat. In stores, friends walk right by him and ask Mike, “Where’s Bruce?”
We haul string 10 at noon. Bruce finishes the bag of Hostess donettes and triumphantly flips it upside down. A little of the extra powder sugar falls out onto the deck. We haul string 17. Bruce takes a selfie with me and posts it to his Facebook. “I only put wholesome, real life stuff on Facebook,” he says.
Between strings 52 and 8, Bruce talks about the regulations he has to abide by. He has to account for fuel, bait, help, and his federal permit. Every day, he has to fill out a report with details about his catch, traps, and helpers. The report has five copies: one for the government, one for his dealer, one for Bruce, and two back-ups. Bruce has a permit for 400 traps in Zone G in western Casco Bay and 400 in Zone F to the east.
Before they set string 8 back in the water, Bruce sees a bait bag hanging out of a trap. He tells Timmy and says, “Timmy must think, ‘How’s he see that shit?’”
Bruce gets animated, “I’m like a bus driver. Jimmy, sit down!” He now holds the titles of captain, quality control guy, and bus driver.
We haul strings 2, 14, and 18 between East Cod Ledge and the Spoil Ground.
South of us, the chart on the screen of the GPS says “Explosives”. Bruce says that about twenty-five years ago when the Navy still had a base in Brunswick, they would practice dropping bombs in the area. They would call out on the radio for no boats to enter the area during that time. Apparently, there are some bombs that have still not gone off.
Bruce says, “If it’s on the map, it’s not good.”
By 3:00 PM, we go out to haul two more strings, and the wind gets a little sharper. A herring gull stands on our bow, catching a ride. Bruce guesses that it was probably tired and hoping for a ride back to shore. Too bad we still have one more string to haul. By now I’ve gotten used to the strong smell of bait and hardly smell it. These guys must not notice it at all.
We get to our final string, number 1, at 3:50 PM. Bruce saved this string for last because he is bringing it in to be patched. He removes the buoys, and coils the rope into a plastic barrel. When each trap comes up, Bruce unties it from the rope, Mike checks the lobsters, and Timmy stacks in at the stern. The quarter mile of rope from one string fills an entire blue barrel.
By 4:15 PM we are cruising back north toward Harpswell. Bruce drinks coffee, puts on his reading glasses, scrolls through Facebook checking how many likes there are so far on his selfie with me. (It’s up to sixty by now.) Mike and Timmy smoke cigarettes before scrubbing down every surface of the boat. We steam back at 10.6 knots.
Bruce says, “The best part of the day is going home.”
The Ruth & Pat heads back out from Portland. It was only in Portland for three hours, long enough to pump the fish out and pump more fuel in.
After catching lobster from a total of twenty-four strings we get back to Harpswell. Bruce weaves through the “highlander’s” boats moored at the Dolphin Marina and pulls up to the wharf.
Bruce sells his lobsters to Tommy Butler, also known as Toby, at the Erica’s Seafood wharf. Tommy has two other boats that also fish for him. He sells to 300-400 people a day both fresh lobsters and cooked at the Erica’s shack.
Bruce says, “It’s really nice coming in and seeing all the people sitting at the picnic tables enjoying their lobster dinner at Erica’s and know that’s your lobster. It’s as fresh as it gets.”
It would be nice if Tommy could have ten crates of lobsters ready at the wharf, but the demand is so high that he often only has one crate on reserve. Sometimes they even use that day’s catch for lobster rolls in the evening.
They unload the lobsters from the boat and weigh them into ninety pound plastic crates. Tommy brings the black banded hard shell lobsters up from the wharf where there are people waiting to buy the fresh lobsters.
Fourteen hours after I got to the wharf in the dark and was greeted by Grandy, the parking lot and picnic tables are full. People are enjoying their six o’clock dinner.
Before I leave, Bruce says, “Today was good. I saw what I needed to see, got the information I needed, and know where I’m going to fish next.”
A sampling of the day's playlist provided by 102.9 Maine's Classic Rock Station:
Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
867-5309/Jenny - Tommy Tutone Free Fallin’ - Tom Petty Highway to Hell - AC/DC Rocket Man - Elton John Take Me Home Tonight - Eddie Money Take the Money and Run - The Steve Miller Band Wheel in the Sky - Journey One Way or Another - Blondie All Right Now - Free |
Centerfold - The J. Geils Band
Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits I Want You to Want Me - Cheap Trick Angie - The Rolling Stones Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd You Give Love a Bad Name - Bon Jovi Break on Through - The Doors T.N.T. - AC/DC Reelin’ in the Years - Steely Dan Somebody to Love - Queen |